Using Social Widgets in Our Digital Signage Software

This short guide will unveil the mystery behind the social widgets we have. Social digital signage is one of the new faces of interactive digital signage, in which we connect to the social networks by bringing them to your big screen. When it comes to Twitter, Instagram and Facebook – the interactivity is cool: you can use your smartphone to update your social network and it will immediately be reflected on your signage screen. Isn’t that splendid?

Currently, there are 6 social widgets:

YouTube

Ustream

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Yammer

YouTube allows you to display YouTube videos and YouTube channels. Using it is very easy: you just need to copy to URL from the browser playing the YouTube video you wish to play on your widget. Please remember that the YouTube widget is streamed and not media files which are cached on your Android or Windows device (as in most widget we have). Hence, in case of internet failure, the YouTube widget will cease playing. Therefore, our recommendation is that in case you have a specific video you wish to play over and over, you better convert it to an MP4 video file (in case there is no copyright) and use it in the video widget instead.

Ustream is a live streamed channel (www.ustream.tv). It broadcasts live channels as well as recorded ones. In order to use the many channels of Ustream, one needs to be a subscriber of Ustream. However, they have also a couple of free channels. Using the widget is very simple: in the “Id” property you just need to fill the ID of the Ustream video you’d like to set.

Yammer allows you to play live feeds either in scrolling layout and in free customizable layout. It allows you text and pictures in several variations. You need to have an account in order to log in and then you can use it. Yammer is a social network used in organizations for internal communication. For more information of the Yammer widget, please click here.

Here is a video for demonstrating how to combine social widgets in your creative and broadcast them to your big screen: